Cannes Unveils ‘Wonderstruck,’ the First Oscar Player of the Festival

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival has just kicked off and the new film from Todd Haynes, Wonderstruck, was first out of the gate and gives us the festival’s first Oscar player.

The first reviews and reactions were overall positive, if not the glowing and rapturous reviews that greeted Haynes’ Carol two years ago. But, as we saw, the best of year reviews for Carol didn’t result in Best Picture or Director nominations at the Oscars. Wonderstruck is being observed at potentially Haynes’ most mainstream and accessible film to date.

Anne Thompson of IndieWire calls it ” a perfect match of source material and cinema” and “Cannes’ first Oscar contender.”

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter says it’s “seductively crafted” and of the performances that Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams use their “ineffable class and sensitivity” while the child actors Millicent Simmonds, Oakes Fegley and Jaden Michael “hold the screen with unselfconscious naturalism.”

Not all reviews were that kind, with The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw calling it “gooey and indulgent” and Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair remarking that, while it looks and sounds great, it’s “twee.”

Composer Carter Burwell, one of Haynes’ many frequent collaborators, has received the best and most consistently strong reviews for his score which traverses the silent era of the 1920s to the loud garishness of 1970s New York City.

At the moment, Wonderstruck is still my #1 for Best Picture and Best Director but some of the mixed and negative reviews sent some of the Gold Rush Gang into a frenzy of predictions updates and where Wonderstruck stood at #1 in both of those categories at the beginning of the month, it’s now at #3 as of this writing, proving that awards predicting can be a fickle mistress.

Here are six new images lensed by the incredible Ed Lachman. Wonderstruck is set for release from Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions on October 20th.